The apparatus of the type specified in the opening paragraphs is, for example, a compact-disc digital audio player which is used with a record carrier in the form of an optically readable disc carrying digitally encoded audio information. An example of such a compact-disc digital audio player is a player which is commercially available from N. V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken under the type designation CD303 at the date of filing of the present application. Before a disc is played on this player it is possible to key in a selection to be reproduced. For this purpose use is made of a subcode which is interleaved with the digital audio information and which inter alia contains a running indication for the track number being reproduced, an index (part of a "track"), and relative and absolute time. In the various known players the parameters which can be programmed are track number, index, and/or time. The keyed-in selection may be stored in a memory as long as playing proceeds.
It is the object of the invention to improve the ease of operation of the known apparatus by speeding up the process of searching for the next track of the selection thus made.